Many injuries are the result of industrial accidents at the workplace. California’s Workers’ Compensation Act provides the following benefits to workers who have been injured on the job:

 

Under California law, employers are responsible for an employee’s injuries occurring on the job without regard to the employee’s carelessness or fault. However, California law also provides that if an employee elects to take Workers’ Compensation, the employee generally may not recover from the employer in any legal action other than Workers’ Compensation (subject to the exceptions mentioned below). Cal Lab Code § 3601. The employee therefore receives definite benefits without having to establish fault, but foregoes the ability to recover a wider range of damages potentially available in tort.

 

There are limited exceptions to the foregoing generalization that an employee recovering benefits under Workers’ Compensation is precluded from suing his or her employer; an employee may sue the employer for intentionally injuring the employee or knowingly allowing the employee to work in an environment that was known to the employer to be hazardous to the employee. An example of the latter situation was the infamous misconduct of Johns-Manville Corporation (JMC). JMC knew that its employees were being continually exposed to life-threatening asbestos, but never removed the employees from the hazard and never warned its employees that the company knew that it was subjecting its employees to injuries, disease and death. California excludes such willful misconduct from the statutory protection, or the exclusive remedy, of Workers' Compensation and allows such cases to be brought directly against the employer.

 

Even if an employee is precluded by law from suing his or her own employer, the employee may be entitled to recover from other parties who are responsible or partly responsible for the employee’s injuries. This is referred to as a “third party claim.” For example, in Zepeda v. Marine Sheet Metal Corp., our firm represented a cannery worker whose hand was cut off by an improperly guarded egg dicer in a lawsuit against the company that manufactured the defective egg dicer.  Unlike a Workers’ Compensation claim, where the employee is entitled to recover only part of their losses, in a third party claim the employee may potentially recover damages for disfigurement, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and emotional distress.